All posts tagged: Larry Gagosian

Larry Gagosian Talks Duchamp, Sushi—and Gives a First Look at the Top Secret New Gagosian Gallery in New York

Larry Gagosian Talks Duchamp, Sushi—and Gives a First Look at the Top Secret New Gagosian Gallery in New York

Published by Sam Flores

Gagosian could have gone with a splashy primary market show, featuring wet paint from one of his hottest living artists. Instead for the inaugural outing, the gallery is showcasing the big bang of conceptual art—to honor his spiritual 980 neighbor, he’s doing a Duchamp show. The timing could not be better, as earlier this month a mind-bending survey of Duchamp’s masterworks opened at the Museum of Modern Art, a short walk away in Midtown. (“When I was planning the show, I didn’t realize MoMA was gonna do this big retrospective, this massive show, but that seemed fortuitous,” Gagosian told me.) The MoMA show has been reaping praise—it’s a revelation—but the most striking thing for me is how fresh it looks, how shocking Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 remains in person, how poetically Cagean it is to see a glass bottle full of Paris air or a snow shovel hanging from the ceiling, and how maddening it is to see the Mona Lisa with a mustache. “That’s a strange sensation, that you’re seeing these works—works …

Larry Gagosian Recalls Misstep With Early Gallery: ‘Nobody Showed Up’

Larry Gagosian Recalls Misstep With Early Gallery: ‘Nobody Showed Up’

Published by Jenni Sidey

Larry Gagosian doesn’t do a lot of interviews, but one supposes when Elle Decor asks to do a glossy profile on the rocket-ship trajectory of his eponymous gallery, you say yes. Speaking on the occasion of a new gallery opening at 980 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side this spring, Gagosian reflected on his many successes—and two notable failures. His short-lived San Francisco gallery, which opened in 2016 near SFMoMA and closed in 2021, was one such failure. At the time, a spokesperson framed the closing as an effort to “consolidate and strengthen Gagosian’s presence in California.” In the interview with Elle Decor, the mega-dealer was quite a bit blunter. Related Articles “It just failed,” Gagosian said. “I mean, nobody showed up. It was so depressing. I’d fly up there for an opening, and there’s nobody there. I’d go, What the f— am I doing here?” While the Bay Area is home to many ARTnews Top 200 collectors, including Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreesen and Laura Arillaga-Andreesen, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, former Gap Inc. chairman Robert Fisher, and …

Sotheby’s and Gagosian Veteran Publishes History of Art Market

Sotheby’s and Gagosian Veteran Publishes History of Art Market

Published by Jenni Sidey

When Valentina Castellani was invited to teach a class at New York University on the history of the art market from the Renaissance to today, she came up against one obstacle in her preparation of the syllabus, even despite her expertise in the matter, with longtime art market experience at both Sotheby’s and Gagosian. “I couldn’t find a book that actually covered all this span,” she said in a phone interview. “There are excellent books and academic studies on many of these periods, but I couldn’t find one that gave the whole panorama.”  Related Articles Aiming to fill that gap is her forthcoming book Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery, to be published by Gagosian itself. (The book was complete by the time Gagosian made the offer, Castellani said, and the gallery and the dealer had no input on its contents. According to Castellani, the book hardly mentions the gallery’s famed founder, Larry Gagosian.)  Featured on the cover is a new artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, and inside is an introduction …

Larry Gagosian, Jasper Johns, and the Strategy Behind a Landmark Show

Larry Gagosian, Jasper Johns, and the Strategy Behind a Landmark Show

Published by José Betancourt

Why did Larry Gagosian want to stage a just-opened blockbuster exhibition of Jasper Johns‘s paintings at his Upper East Side gallery in New York? “First of all, because I want to look at them,” he told Alison McDonald in a soon-to-be-published Gagosian Quarterly interview. It’s not an especially lofty justification, but it’s at least an honest one—and it sets the tone for the entire conversation. In the piece, Gagosian talks fluently about the formal characteristics of Johns’s art—the way the 95-year-old artist works his surfaces, the way he wields his materials—but Gagosian generally doesn’t linger on the concepts behind the crosshatch paintings in this show. Instead, Gagosian is quickened, it seems, by what happens when you stand in front of these works for long enough. Related Articles The exhibition is undeniably strong. The crosshatch paintings, made between 1973 and 1983, are less austere than one might expect. Up close, they’re dense and worked, their encaustic interrupted by the occasional glimpse of newsprint or grit. From across the room, Johns’s marks loosen, and his grids soften. …